Each night, a fire was summoned by the Keeper, and each night it kept the monsters of the Red Wastes at bay.

Until it didn't.

The boy was deep into his meditation training when it happened. His sword was held in a high guard, ready to sweep down on an imaginary enemy. He moved it slowly, letting the Memory of his great-grandfather guide the blade. He had not slept in twenty days, yet he felt wide awake. Training was his sleep, now. He sustained himself on Memory alone.

A flash of something grey caught his eye, and his body moved with instincts that weren't his own. His blade lashed out, and an arrow clattered to the ground, cut in half. He stared at it for a full second before coming to his senses.

"Kobolds!" he bellowed, before diving to the ground. Half a dozen more arrows sprouted from the earth where he once stood. The boy landed in a roll and came up sprinting, taking a straight path to where the first arrow had come. He was running entirely on instinct now, with the Memory of ancient battles thrumming within him. Combat, it seemed, brought the best of him to bear.

Foreign instincts whispered a warning, and the boy cut another arrow down, mid-flight. He crossed the flat stone plateau upon which they'd made their camp in four leaping strides, and came crashing down upon a group of creatures hidden in the darkness. There were four of them, clustered together, wielding primitive bows and spears. The boy took them in with a glance as he dropped down from above.

Kobolds looked like short, bipedal canines with scaly skin and a bad case of mange. Their patchy fur was the same shade of dull red as the earth beneath them, and their intermittent sprinkling of grey scales helped them blend in against the large rocks that dotted the landscape. They were intelligent, in that they were capable of communication and higher learning, but were, by all accounts, wholly uninterested in doing so. Like most beasts of the Barrens, they were focused only on gaining strength. Usually by eating other intelligent creatures. Or each other.

The boy considered few, if any, of these facts as he came down on them like an incredibly violent sack of bricks. He'd never seen a living kobold before, but his father had told stories. They were just about the only intelligent beings in the Barrens, and tended to keep far away from Farathun. They were tribal, forming massive groups that rose and fell in a matter of years. They bred fast and died faster. Life was cheap in the uncivilized wasteland beyond the boy's home city. Nothing had ever punctuated this fact to him more emphatically than the way his training sword sheared through the first kobold, splitting it in half with a scream and a spray of blood.

It was his first kill, and he couldn't help but freeze for a fraction of a second, as his face was coated in gore. In another life, perhaps this would have happened in a controlled environment, with his father by his side to guide him through the experience. To rationalize why it was necessary, and build a firm foundation of when it was justified to take a life. That justification would have likely been 'when it serves the All-King,' however, so maybe the boy was better off as he was.

Regardless, there were no pauses in combat. Three enemies remained, two of them with spears, and they immediately moved to gut him. He barely brought his sword up in time to parry the jabs—his shock had broken his combat meditation—and he reflexively followed with a riposte that his father had drilled into him from birth. Another kobold fell, its scrawny, malnourished body cleaved almost in half. It screamed like a dying hare, a high pitched keening noise that alerted every living thing for miles.

Its partner staggered backward, tripping over its own feet in its haste to retreat. The boy dashed past it, towards the last remaining archer, which was struggling to draw a bead on him. He tugged on the Memory of his earlier feat, letting it empower him. He could feel the creature's own Memory adding to his prowess, the fear of what he had done, of what he might do again. He drank deep of that well, reliving the moment a hundred times over.

The bowstring snapped forward, the boy's blade flashed, and two halves of an arrow skipped across the bare earth. The next instant, he was upon the kobold. He took its head before it could scream for help, then moved grimly onward to his final standing enemy.

The creature was retreating as fast as it could. It had cast aside its spear in favor of running away on all-fours, scampering quickly into the darkness. The boy refused to let it escape. It was an enemy, and it needed to die. That was the way of things, he had been taught. He just hadn't realized how easy it could be. He was much larger than the kobold, and much faster, despite its best efforts. Ten strides and it was dead. He finished off the last one left alive, still screaming on the ground with its stomach split open, soon after.

Only after his last foe fell silent did his exhaustion seize him. He staggered in place, battle-lust replaced with bone-deep weariness. He dimly realized that he couldn't remember the last time he had actually slept. Then, he remembered the reason why.

"Teacher!" the boy shouted, quickly sprinting back to their campsite. At some point, the fire had been extinguished. He could barely make out shapes moving in the darkness. He hefted his sword, pulling once more on Memory to drive away his fatigue.

Fire bloomed, lighting up the night. "Calm, Nicos," the Keeper chided, holding the ball of flame aloft. He tipped it, like a man pouring water, and the camp fire reignited atop its stone pillar.

A knot of tension loosened in the boy's chest. His eyes quickly searched the ground, looking for his teacher, and signs of battle. He saw no corpses, though the earth seemed smooth, windswept, and spotless. Not even footprints remained, seemingly scoured away. Finally, he found his teacher, lounging prone on the ground. She had barely shifted since the last he'd seen her. Both her blades were still sheathed, though her left hand rested gently on the pommel of that exotic dagger she kept sheathed in her waist sash.

"Steps?" she asked him, waving an arm in his direction expectantly.

The boy blinked at the question, but a quick mental recap provided an answer. "Twenty-two, teacher."

She grunted. "Good."

Was that it? Maybe she'd missed his battle. He puffed out chest.

"I slayed four kobolds, using what you've taught me," he announced.

One eye cracked open as she regarded him passively. He shifted, awkwardly unsure of himself. At this point, he imagined that his father would have announced his own number of kills, to give the boy perspective. His teacher merely stared, so the boy decided to help her along.

He cleared his throat. "How many did you kill, teacher?"

"None," she replied without a trace of shame.

"None?" he echoed, almost aghast. As her student, his performance should be below hers in every aspect. It was unthinkably shameful for him to surpass her so quickly.

She shrugged, seemingly unaware of his outrage. "I was feeling merciful today. I gave them all a good scare, then sent them on their way."

"Merciful?" the boy repeated, incredulously. He found himself quoting an old Farathun saying. "Mercy is the failing of the weak."

Eurya smiled languidly up at him, shaking her head in disappointment.

"Mercy," she corrected, "is the privilege of the strong."

"The strong kill their enemies, so that they may never threaten them again," the boy insisted.

She shook her head once more, an amused tilt pulling at her lips. "The strong are not threatened by their enemies. That is what it means to be strong."

What.

"I don't understand," the boy admitted helplessly.

Eurya sighed, then sat up fully. She crossed her legs, resting her elbow against her thigh and her chin against her fist. "I spoke to you before, about how perception can shape Memory. Your own, and that of others." With her free hand, she gestured into the darkness. "They attacked me, as countless others have. They lost, as all did that have come before. You think I should kill them? Why? They are no threat to me. They could never be a threat to me." She stared at him, her eyes as cold as flint. All sense of playfulness had left her, and he sensed, for the first time, that she was speaking some intrinsic truth of her existence. "Can I be driven to action by such small, insignificant beings? Are they worthy of my consideration? No. I grant them the same attention as a buzzing fly. They are not worth expending even the negligible effort it would require to kill them. Doing such would only weaken me."

The boy struggled to grasp the idea that taking action could ever weaken someone. It must have been clear on his face, because Eurya elaborated.

She gestured to herself. "We are defined by our actions. Memory ensures that nothing is forgotten. Everything we do, spirals outwards unto others. Over time, these little actions add up. Those creatures will remember me." She grinned. "They will remember how effortlessly they were driven away. That Memory will strengthen me far more than killing them could ever have. Perhaps they will pass a fear of me down to their spawn. Perhaps I will inspire one of them to grow stronger. Or perhaps they will die, and that Memory will pass into the world unshared. Regardless, I will profit from it."

Profit. That, the boy could understand. Farathun was all about profit. Mercenaries lived by it. But the method seemed so wrong.

"You're saying that, by sparing enemies, I'll grow in strength? What if they come for me in the future? What if their failure empowers them to future victories." He remembered his loss against the new Hero of Farathun. Eurya had saved the boy's life that day, but the Hero's carelessness had bought him the time needed for her to intercede. Had the older man moved to finish him faster, perhaps the boy would not be here today.

"I'm saying that the strong do not fear their enemies," Eurya stated. "They do not fear those enemies returning in the future. They do not fear the growth of those enemies, even if they are the ones causing that growth."

The boy scowled. "I think I'd rather die than have an enemy help me grow stronger."

"That's because you are young, and stupid," she replied immediately. "There is no growth without adversity. And what is adversity, after all, if not an opportunity for growth, given to you by your enemies?" After a moment, she added, "You yourself have benefited from this. You'd be dead, if not for that Hero's mercy."

"His carelessness," the boy corrected uncertainly. "He took me for a child, and will pay the price in the future."

"You are a child," the Keeper interrupted from his place by the fire. He jabbed a finger in the boy's direction. "A nearly untested youth of only sixteen seasons. Tell me, Nicos, would your father have been willing to kill such a person? No matter how provoked?"

The boy's argument stalled before it could leave his lips. He could only helplessly reply, "My father was a great man."

"Your father was strong, loyal, and honorable," Eurya said. "Drokken wouldn't appoint a replacement who lacked those same qualities. It's a necessity for all Heroes. It has always been that way." She gestured at the air. "Strong enough to hold the position against all challengers. Loyal enough to submit to the All-King's directives, no matter how suicidal. Honorable enough that they inspire the people around them with their integrity."

The Keeper picked up where she left off. He smiled sadly. "They obey the All-King in all things, and their integrity becomes, by extension, his own. The Hero serves, and his Memory empowers the All-King. It's a brilliant system. Why be a paragon, when you can have someone else do it for you, and reap all the benefits yourself?"

"That's not—" The boy flailed for a convincing denial. Who he was trying to convince, he was uncertain.

"Regardless, of that," Eurya continued, "that Hero could have killed you in a heartbeat. He wanted to give you an out, a chance to surrender. In doing so, he would both spare your life, and empower himself. Defeating you is, to some extent, defeating the Memory of your father. It was a win-win for the man." She nodded to him. "He misjudged you, but his intentions were not necessarily wrong."

"He'll come to regret it," the boy found himself saying. The threat was half-hearted, at best.

"Mercy, Nicos," Eurya repeated, ignoring his statement. "It is the privilege of the strong. He was strong, and you were not. In the future, you might find that situation reversed. It will be up to you to act as you see fit." She paused, then added, "In the future. For now, you are still small and weak. Better to kill that which might threaten you. Just don't get crazy with it."

And on that uninspiring note, she flopped back down, and went to sleep.

The fire crackled. The Keeper sighed exasperatedly, then sat down himself. He nodded to the boy, then laid down to rest.

The boy kept watch through the night, as was his duty, but his thoughts lingered on unpleasant truths.